Sade Is It a Crime T-Shirt

Blackletter and ammunition for the calmest voice of the 1980s: SADE in Old English over a halftone glamour portrait, "Is It a Crime" beneath it, and on the back four standing rifle cartridges above the plea — is it a crime that I still want you? And I want you to want me too. The song is from Promise (1985), the album's second single, written by Sade Adu with Andrew Hale and Stuart Matthewman: six minutes that build from a whisper to the closest this band ever came to shouting. The design belongs to the bootleg wave that adopted quiet-storm royalty — Sade above all — and dressed her in the visual grammar of gangsta-rap merch, the gap between the iconography and the music being the entire point. This exact bullets-and-blackletter print is one of the most-reproduced Sade designs going, circulating from eBay listings to fast-fashion copies — proof the design hit, and fair warning that the print, not any particular shirt, is the famous thing.

Black short sleeve cotton tee with Sade Is It a Crime graphic.

Sourcing
We source these shirts from thrift stores, estate sales, and directly from bootleg and overprint collectors.